Who remembers whoopie pies? They were all the rage five or six years ago; a friend gave me a whoopie pie baking tin and recipe book and I made walnut whip and chocolate ones decorated to look like Christmas puddings.
I loved the taste and texture, somewhere between cake and a soft cookie, so when I went down to see my family one weekend in August I decided to make some to take with me. I wanted to cater for a dad who doesn't eat chocolate and a husband who doesn't eat much cake unless it is chocolate - there are a few other things he likes so I quickly settled on toffee.
There is a recipe in The Whoopie Pie Book by Claire Ptak for salty caramel whoopies; she suggests you serve it with her caramel Swiss buttercream, but that uses raw egg whites and my sister is pregnant. I actually had some salted caramel icing sugar from Sugar and Crumbs so decided to use that.
I got about 9 large whoopie pies out of the mixture - even when I try to make them smaller, they seem to turn out huge!
You need:
300g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
125g butter
120ml whole milk
200g light brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
Melt the butter in a saucepan with the milk, then remove from the heat.
Beat the sugar, eggs and vanilla in a bowl then mix in the flour, baking powder and salt. Pour in the milk mixture and stir until combined. Chill in the fridge for 30 mins. Meanwhile preheat oven to 180C.
Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper and drop equal-sized spoonfuls of the batter onto the paper, spaced well apart.
Bake for 10-12 minutes until risen but still slightly soft. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
For the filling, I beat the pre-flavoured salted caramel icing sugar with some margarine and used it to sandwich the whoopie pies together.
They may not be the prettiest to look at, but tasted great!
